Motorola Ditches Google For Bing In China

Tweet

Motorola and Microsoft signed an agreement together today that confirmed that Bing will now be the exclusive search provider for Motorola phones in China. You’d think this would be up to the telcom carrier too (hence AT&T putting Amazon on the Backflip recently) but apparently Motorola has more sway than you’d think.

What’s really shocking is that Motorola is planning an OTA update to change the default search engine to Bing. The press release says that Microsoft will now be the default search provider for all Android phones in China – and while all future Android phones will come with Bing, that wasn’t good enough for Redmond as Motorola will be patching in Bing support for all current phones.

Google can’t be happy. They’ve taken no action on the China spying scandal, which leads us to believe that they’ll continue their operations in the country. Considering that Google makes their income on search advertising, they’ve got to be annoyed that a major handset manufacturer just went with another search provider in the world’s biggest country. To add insult to injury, the Motorola-Bing deal apparently only covers Android phones.

Christy Wyatt, a Motorola VP says in a press statement that by bringing Bing to all Motorola Android phones in China that it helps them “[ensure] a rich and seamless client experience.” A bit odd considering the search engine being replaced is the one developed by the same folks who built the mobile OS – but I digress.

The press release refers to this continuing the great business relationship between Motorola and Microsoft, which leads me to speculate that Microsoft offered a large monetary incentive for Motorola to drop Google and add Bing to their Chinese Android phones.

Also, of note in the press release, Motorola is preparing two new Android smartphones for the Chinese market later this year.